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By litwol on
I am completely new to Drupal, i dont even have a single drupal site running due to the fact that i'm trying to learn how to make a custom theme site.
i have been playing with drupal for a while now so i have a solid grip on the admin side of drupal but i still have very little power over creating custom themes.
so my question to you guys is how long did it take you to be able to create custom themes that are not based off existing themes.
and what tutorial could you recomend for a starter like me, other than handbook, to learn how to make custom themes?
Comments
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Once I sat down and really tried it, not that long.
Try this tutorial here: http://www.blkmtn.org/how-to-play-with-Yahoo-GRID-CSS
I just switched my site to 5.0rc1 and haven't had time to port my theme, what with all the holidays and such. Oh, don't start with trying to understand Garland, it's a rather advanced theme. Start with tearing apart Blue Marine.
-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
you can also take a look at
you can also take a look at the http://www.dudertown.com videocasts.
oh yes
And a more extensive set for 4.7 is the ibm articles.
structuring content and styling content
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
Those advice you guys
Those advice you guys provide for us who are just starting are really much appreciated. I am still relativly far from starting to build a complex drupal theme but maybe soon I give it a try.
don't start from scratch
It didn't take me terribly long to do the bulk of my theme, but I was tweaking little details for a while afterward. A lot will depend on how familiar you are with frontend design in general--if you've a ton of experience with HTML and CSS, it's pretty easy; if you've never done basic web design before it will take longer.
My advice is to start from an existing theme rather than starting from scratch--make a copy of whichever theme you want to start from and experiment with the copy. I took Sands CSS (because I needed XHTML strict compliance) and then changed it piece by piece until I had a custom theme. It's useful to read instructions on creating a theme, but in my opinion it's more instructive (and faster) to actually "go under the hood" to read and modify the source of an existing theme.
If you don't have much experience with frontend design, then you should probably start by making a static HTML "mockup" of your page design (either by hand or using a web design tool like Dreamweaver, GoLive, etc.). You can then modify the HTML in your test theme's template files (with your static HTML document as a guide).
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Just another newbie.
XHTML Strict: it's the way to be.
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Feature request: HTML Source Formatting in TinyMCE
Hi Litwol Good advice so far
Hi Litwol
Good advice so far . Start with tweaking a theme .
How I learn't ( am learning ) css.
Lets take blue marine . Change the name of the folder on your side whatever eg. myblue, and upload that into the theme directory server side. Then pick it as the default theme.
Admittedly I have a 30" screen which makes it easy , so on my mac I use transmit3 to both upload (ftp) and edit and a file. I pick the style.css file in the myblue on the server side and open it in transmit3 edit and put that file to the left of my monitor , and on the right open the website in my browser so I can see the live site.
Change a line or value in the css file , and save it . Refresh the browser view of your live site , and see what changes. Dont like it , back to transmit3 and undo - save and refresh the browser and your back .
Cheers hon
kate
Same here
I'm by no means a master themer yet but I learned what I know by just editting the images and seeing where they sit on the page. I'll go into the themes images directory and just outline the pictures in different colors or change them all to completely different colors. Then I know what goes where and can adjust them accordingly. I haven't tried anything that advanced quite yet because I'm a fan of simple design.
I really need to learn how to do snippets to tweak themes with some cool looking things.
I'd just say toy around, keep toying around and just do searchs on drupal when you feel you need to know more and do a lot of reading in the forum, its full of tons of good info and people. Theres lots of hidden links on this domain that are sweet hidden tidbits that only seem to be found through spelunking in the forum.
I second the dudertown recommendation
There is a great screencast there that does a step by step of taking an existing web page and turning it into a drupal theme just by cutting and pasting from an existing theme. I think this is the best introduction to theming for someone who learns visually.
It's important to make a distinction between the css/xhtml side of things and the drupal side of things. If you know css and xhtml, you can create a drupal theme in minutes, so long as you are willing to accept the out-of-box navigation structures and functionality. If you are new to css and xhtml, the timeline will be considerably longer and there are much better resources for that side of things than anything you will find here.
If the out-of-the-box functionality of the theme doesn't suit you, I recommend having a look at the theming guide here and if your main concern is the navigation (as mine was) reviewing the api relating to the menu system and taking a peek around your Drupal database to look at the node, menu and url_alias tables.
working with drupal for a couple of weeks now
and here is what I have done...
drupal.glyphnet.com
I am constantly working on it and changing it. I wouldn't suggest starting from scratch...I did this by coping and pasting one of the default themes into a test template. I started looking for other themes to do things like the horizontal menu. I think you learn best from picking out other themes...I am not ready to make my own theme yet, but I know it is coming. I am starting to understand more and more each day...check out the bottom of the documentation page...I have documented my learning there.
Its quite good glyphman. C/P
Its quite good glyphman. C/P method should be a much convinient one to start with and too get somekind of a feel for composing a quality content to an article also by giving it a bit of your own touch.
I feel it all falls to its place given the time and some effort, while of course having interest and a decent amount of knowledge to start with.
Just my voice of support for you guys just starting out.
I dont quite think its a
I dont quite think its a good start if you take someone elses article and redesign it a little. Infact you wont get anything of your own- you are just taking other peoples hard work to make life easier on yourself.
Process of building your own articles should come slowly and with your maximum effort from your side. I see no point to do something other, especially using c/p method to present as your own.
that architect piece is hilarious!
I have been dabbling in Drupal for about two months now. I'm really impressed with some of the stuff that can be done... and also feel I am pretty far from that level.
Jean Gazis